“Please, love, open the door.”
“You’re not playing fair, and since when?”
“Since when what?” he answered, his voice so decadently gruff that it was no surprise at all that my dick responded before my brain kicked in.
“Love—” I repeated, “—I doh-don’t—” Shit. “You’re not—you… no endearments.” I gave up. Talking was not happening at the moment.
“I’ll call you whatever I damn well want to. Now open the door.”
“Ian,” I managed to get out, fingers splayed on the wood as I tried to focus on what I was trying to do and not what I wanted.
“Do you know what it’ll do to me if you keep me from going with you?”
That had actually never occurred to me. I’d been so wrapped up in wanting to keep him safe that I had not considered how he felt.
Not once.
“What if—”
“Is that what we do?” he pressed, and I heard him bump the door. “We sit around and think about what could happen?”
No, we didn’t. That would be the death of us as lovers, partners, marshals—everything. Worrying led to a life of static and I didn’t want that for either of us.
“So because you’re scared, we’ll be apart.” It was a statement, but the sound of him, seductive, silvery, sent a throb of need rushing through me. “And on top of everything else, you’ll miss me, and it’ll be you deciding, finally, what I will or won’t do.”
I wanted to see him, but I didn’t dare open the door. He had me if I did. “That’s not what this is.”
“Oh no? Because it feels like you exercising power over me.”
Shit.
“And you’re not like that,” he concluded softly. “How could you be?”
“Ian—”
“It’s how I know you really love me,” he said, clearing his throat. “You don’t try and change me.”
I scoffed.
“Except for that one thing,” he chuckled.
I smiled wide, alone in the bathroom because, yeah, I wasn’t about to let the marriage thing go. “Okay,” I agreed. Being without him when I didn’t have to be was just plain stupid. I was a lot of things, but not that. Plus, saying no to Ian had always been next to impossible.
A moment ticked by.
“You gonna open the fuckin’ door?”
“Don’t sound so smug,” I shot back.
“Open the door,” he demanded. “I wanna kiss you before we gotta catch the red-eye.”
I couldn’t say no to that, either.
“HOLY SHIT,” Ian groaned as we got off the shuttle that had taken us from the airport terminal at Sky Harbor International in Phoenix to the one where all the rental car companies were. It was only a circle of pavement, a stone sidewalk, and a glass building, deserted at this time of the morning. We were the only ones out there after the shuttle dropped us off. It was also hot, and I was surprised the temperature was already so high. “This is like fuckin’ AT out in Twentynine Palms all over again.”
I chuckled. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and what is AT?”
“Annual training,” he muttered before he put on his aviator sunglasses.
“And Twentynine Palms is what?”
“It’s a hellhole in California towards Nevada, but the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center is there, and that’s the important thing.”
“Oh, you train there with them.”
He nodded. “Sadly, yes.”
“So, what, the temperature reminds you of it?”
“Everything does,” he grumbled. “The dirt I can see over there, the rocks, the cactus—God, I hate the fuckin’ desert.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“The hell I didn’t,” he retorted.
I threw an arm around his shoulders, pulling him toward me, and sank my fingers into his hair. “It’s not that bad, and it’s really not that hot.”
He muttered something about me needing a psych eval, and I couldn’t stifle a laugh.
“We’re in the shade and it’s hot,” he complained. “It’s like standing in an oven all day.”
“If you hate the heat so much,” I teased him, nuzzling my face into the side of his neck, “you seriously should have stayed home.”
“I already told—what’re you doing?”
I was always looking for that one scent I would love and wear forever. I spent money on cologne. It wasn’t like I was forever haunting the mall, but if I was there, I checked. Ian, on the other hand, used stuff he picked up in Chinatown that was dirt cheap, that he bought off the shelf at some place that also sold supplements and herbs and seasonings. He didn’t buy anything to make him smell good. That didn’t even blip on his radar as something he needed to consider. He only bought the essentials—shampoo and conditioner, that had no English anywhere on either bottle—and something that he slathered on after he shaved to keep his face from hurting. I suspected it moisturized, but I would never tell him that. The thing was, his hair stuff plus the product—singular—he put in his hair, all of it together cost fifteen dollars. I knew because the last time he ran out of everything I’d gone with him to buy more. The man was stunning, so whatever he was using worked great, but the best part was the mixture of scents.